Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Early spring kayaking video


I wanted to see if I could put together a video of some sort from a paddling trip. Nothing fancy, just a short video with glimpses and impressions. Making videos is an interest of mine, but I haven't really found much time for it lately. Videos are a natural extension to photography, but still quite different and a lot more demanding if good results are to be achieved.


It was clear that this would be different from filming mountain biking videos, since it takes a lot more time to stop, land and rig up cameras when paddling. It was also clear that a GoPro would be needed to get more material. I've always been ambivalent about the GoPro, since especially with mountain biking videos I can't stand the GoPro angle, probably because it's so overused. It is also difficult to get stable enough shots on a bike, unless you mount the GoPro on the helmet, which is a rather uninteresting position. I do have two GoPros, but the older Hero 2 isn't really good enough to get clips that mix with the other stuff. The Hero 2 has a fairly good full HD resolution (1920x1080), but after stabilizing and defishing the image (I can't stand the fisheye perspective either), the resolution is too low compared to what you get from 4K cameras. The Hero 4 Black is a good camera, though. The 4K resolution is quite good and yields a good result even after defishing, stabilizing and straightening the horizon. The only drawback is that it uses too short shutter times, since it has no aperture control or ND filter. I have two GoPro mounting options for the kayak: An ordinary GoPro suction cup and a Kayaly suction mount with extension bar. To use both mounts at the same time I would have needed a second GoPro, but the only GoPro supporting 4K video is the Hero 4 Black, which costs almost 500 €.

In addition to the GoPro, I have two Panasonic cameras: a FZ1000, which I've had since 2014, and a relatively new G7 with two excellent Panasonic Leica lenses (15/1.7 and 25/1.4). Both have a good 4K video mode. Having two cameras at least enables getting more material from one place, which is nice when setting up cameras.

The result is below:


A version in Swedish is found here.

I did unfortunately not get any reasonable sound. I brought the Zoom H1, but since I had lost the dead cat the wind destroyed the sound completely. I therefore had to cover the sound of the video with music and complement it with the few usable (and some less usable) clips from the G7. Otherwise I think I got fairly good video clips, but more would have been nice when editing. The star time lapse at night failed since I forgot to put a new battery in the camera. The focusing is off in a few places, which just shows that even with the relatively small sensors of the cameras, focusing accuracy still matters. I'll have to pay more attention to that in the future.

This was also a test to see how much it would be possible to pan and zoom in software, when delivering full HD output from 4K material. I think this is about as much as can be done, since the contrast to the material scaled directly down from 4K would be too big, even though it might otherwise compare well with ordinary full HD material.

The post processing is a difficult chapter. I could still use a lot more time and get noticeable improvements working with the video editor, but I did draw the line here. For video editing I really would need a more powerful computer instead of the cheap laptop I now have, but with limited funds I have to make choices: For the price of a good video editing workstation cost one would get a decent open canoe...

I still think the result is fairly decent, but more practice is needed.


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